Five days of whispers, speculation, ‘guess who?’ all over the country. Then for i British the mystery happened lo choc. Late yesterday afternoon, the BBC beats the breaking news: it is Huw Edwards61, the star of British public television suspended since last Friday, after the scandalous news published on the pages of the tabloid The Sun which accused a famous – but anonymous – presenter of having paid thousands of pounds to a person (of unspecified gender) in exchange for sexual photos since the age of 17. Despite the strict UK privacy and libel laws, the name had to be made public, because the prolonged absence from the screens of the king of British information (among the highest paid personalities of state TV) was beginning to be an easy clue. And also because colleagues, frustrated by the climate of suspicion in the company, had made a appeal because the mysterious presenter, 61, finally came out into the open.
In the end, however, it was there that identified him wife, Vicky Flindtelevision producer, who released a use dramatic and worrying in which, ‘to preserve the mental health of the Husband and protect their five children’, he communicated to the nation that ‘the severe depression referred to Edwards has been suffering for some time has been aggravated by the events of recent days so much so that the face of the News at 10 on BBC1 is now hospitalized in psychiatric hospital where he will stay until he gets better. It will be then – he wrote Flind – that he will respond to the news published against him”. There affair freezes and confuses consciences. There alleged victimthrough lawyerhe defined the inferences of the Sun such as ‘rubbish’ and the alleged culprit, a screen professional INFLUENCE e faultlessis now reduced to hospital, sunk by a sex scandal of those from which it is difficult to get up.
The facts – The story is morally doubtful, the facts yet to be proven. To accuse Huw Edwards on the Sun it had been the mother of the person, now twenty, who sold them Photo erotica to buy crack. Removed a sasso has literally begun to collapse there mountain and so other revelations against the announceraccording to which the man threatened another young man with aggressive and intimidating messages, and even violated the lockdown to meet a young met in a chat. There are those who evoke Jimmy Savillethe famous former host of the program BBC Top of the Popsknown as the most prolific pedophile in the United Kingdom and who instead screams at a new conspiracy of Sunthe tabloid tabloid owned by Rupert Murdochto sink the BBC striking him, his backbone, the award-winning journalist who in his 40-year career has told the British about the most significant moments in their history, from nights electoralat royal weddings, to the announcement that broke the nation’s heart: the death of the queen Elizabeth. He was always there in the most important moments, authoritative, composed and elegant, he was a model of perfection and a certainty for the British. Until yesterday.
The investigations – The police has no evidence in hand, i payments for the alleged erotic photos are not corroborated by bank receiptsand none emerged information that can configure a crime. For this reason, the police have closed the shops for the time being investigations. Instead, the internal investigation of the BBC has been opened which will have to shed light on the conduct of its spearhead and on the company’s responsibilities in handling complaints. In the last few hours we talk for example of three employees of the broadcaster that they would have been approached inappropriately by Edwards with allusive and provocative messages. The investigation promises to be complex and delicate in view of the mental state of the presenter. A trauma for him and for an entire nation.
Who is Huw Edwards – Grew up in Wales, a graduate of Cardiff University, honorary professor of journalism at the same university, Edwards has been considered for a couple of decades a sort of icon and image man of the values that public service should represent in front of His Majesty’s subjects and a worldwide audience. The man who has been entrusted with direct memorable national life such as the one dedicated to death and the Elizabeth’s funeral or, even earlier, at the weddings of the two sons of the current king, Carlo IIIThat of the principe William con Kate before and that of Harry con Meghan Then. As well as, as an envoy abroad and on an international scale, those on the victory in the US presidential elections by Barack Obama or on funerals in South Africa by Nelson Mandela.